Amazon.com: Books: The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity Reason and Romanticism

My other “fun” read this weekend was rereading The Pilgrim’s Regress. This is a book that I have read about four times. The first time I was a pre-teen who read it for the story. I was dimly aware that there was a great deal of philosophy going on in the background, but did not care. What moved me was the description of the “joy.” It was the first time someone outside of my own family had talked this inner yearning. I remember standing in the woods calling out of the something. I did not know what. Oddly, I was an active Christian, but somehow my religion did not seem to meet this need. Why? I cannot say. My yearning was mental, emotional, and physical, but Christianity seemed unable to all of these at the same time. Yet in my family it was. So why did I miss it? I cannot say except to say: “sin.”

Oddly, reading this book did not prevent me from making many of the mistakes in it while growing up. Reading it around college age, I was more attracted to the “bad parts” than to Christianity. God was read, but I wished Athena was real. The old pagan myths often attracted me more than my own faith. This is was surely wicked as my desire was for a god who was small and perhaps could be controlled.

I tried to quench the desire for the Other in sexual romanticism and spent a long time with Old Man Wisdom. I regret the first entirely and was partly saved by second. The hardest lesson here is know the limits of education. Hearing the truth at a young age did not save me from mistakes. Read Christian experience also did not help. My wickedness made me wish for less “mundane” solutions to my problems. I could not imagine Carpenter could also be the God of Plato and Dante. When I think about my early twenties, it is with shame. The call of the Lord Jesus on my life was so clear that was no excuse for my mistakes.

Reading it on the other side of coming to the end of my sin, was a revelation. I had repeated almost all the errors in book with less excuse. Jesus had called me home. My intellectual route to Him did fill me with pride, but with shame. I had traveled far, like John in the book, to reach a place my grandparents reached in half the time. God help me.

Now reading it at the start of middle age, I am filled with hope. On the other side of my folly, there is a chance that I can become a warrior for the cause of Christ. I have loved both dragons, the dragon of intellectual coldness and sensuality, and been rescued from both. God help me I shall not “cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword rest in my hand” until I have come to live in that Heavenly City.

Is there anything like Christianity, both erotic and rational? As J.P. Moreland and the rest of the apologetics team have been working to combine true heart religion, a God of miracles, with best reason, the God of Dante, my soul is being renewed. It is the same God I saw dimly in Bible College, but somehow my heart has grown to contain more of Him. If you are in doubt, I hope that you can see there is more to the faith than what you see in failed servants such as myself. The glory of Christianity is that it is Bigger. Bigger than any box.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, be merciful to me a sinner.

Amazon.com: Books: City of Angels (Shannon Saga, 1)

Who is the best airport read in America? My pick is James Scott Bell. He is a compelling writer who gets to the point. I have been a fan from his first, the thoughtful and funny Darwin Conspiracy. The Shannon Saga shows a mature Bell working with historical details of the Los Angeles Edwardian Era to produce court room mysteries that remind me of the best of Agatha Christie. Some of the secondary characters are weak, but the central characters are well drawn and believable. The after taste of Bell fiction is sweet. I started the last book in this series and stayed up until finished. It was that intriguing. Be careful not to miss your plane if you start it in line.

This is one Christian author who deserves to be read outside of the ghetto of Christian fiction. He also proves good work is being done in that area of literature. This is not C.S. Lewis, but it is fun.

Biola has a first rate Conservatory, that deserves even more money and support. I have had great pleasure at many fine concerts. However, today Torrey Music Club put on a worship service I enjoyed more than any other event I have attended in a long while. Too often in our culture we worship the professional at the expense of the joy of community. Music is too important to be left to the professional, though there is a place for the professional. No one has been to Messiah done by untrained voices could doubt it.

The music club did a selection of hymns, the songs of the parish not the professional, mixed in with Lutheran catechism, the theological of the layman. It was divine. If you doubt a liberal, Christ-centered education exists, you should have seen the faces of these students. They meant what they were singing. They sang well, having worked hard, though not professionally. Their errors were of no consequence. What they did well mattered. Soul and body united to make music. When they invited the congregation to sing, it was wonderful to hear parents, Torrey chums, and other Biola students unite in praise to the creator. Students like the luminous Allison Connet, the director, remind me of why I teach. It was sacrament as the singers imparted grace to the audience at a deep level.

Take hope. The culture is not lost when it can produce such men and women.

The New Republic Online: Just Like Us (1 of 2): “France’s most celebrated soldier of the eighteenth century, the Marchal de Saxe, once observed that he did not really believe in battles, and thought skillful commanders could win wars simply by outmaneuvering their opponents. He and his fellow nobles fought for limited political aims against adversaries whom they considered honorable equals. The French Revolution swept away this sort of warfare, unleashing huge conscript armies, toppling regimes left and right, and making it incumbent on commanders not merely to outmaneuver but to annihilate their enemies. “

For those who think Christianity is the cause of the horror of war, let me suggest a close reading of history. Christianity never has been comfortable with war. Christians bow the knee, after all, to the Prince of Peace. It is modernity that brings us total war where there are no rules. Christians had reduced war to an almost comic opera thing, before declining faith gave men new gods. Napoleon was such a god, Sadaam another. Somewhere in his cave Bin Laden is a third.

Against them fights a Texas gentleman, well bred and true, who will not stoop to any deed. He is so just that it costs him. If he was the monster his foes imagined, they would not be imagining anymore. Instead, he fights on with his brave army. God save the President of the United States.

MSNBC - Bush Is to Blame

Before getting excited that your child is accepted at an “elite” University, read this article. Delivering your child to the state university system is akin to giving your children as a sacrifice to Moloch.

According to the writer/student, the pornographic pictures and abuse of terrorists is the fault of Bush and his morality. Let’s see. It could not be that the free ability to access disgusting images on which the abuse is modeled on the Internet undermined their morals. It could not be that a “culture of death” (celebrated at Berkeley) undermines respect for human life. No, it is Christian morality that is to blame as if Bush and just war theory make prison abuse more, not less likely. The Berkeley student might want to examine where standards for treating prisoners of war came from. A really tough question: where did the Red Cross get its name? (Hint: not from the symbol for a modern ethics department.)

Here is the problem. We live in a dangerous world where war will be necessary. Pacifism is unworkable for a society as it leaves the pacifist society at the mercy of barbarians. War leads to difficult moral situations. Christianity provides a way of making those difficult moral situations. The left has banned Christianity from education. So now we have functional pacifists at Berkeley, who would be the first to die if the terrorists win, who cannot fight. They are defended by many Christians who view the world through a moral prism and try to win hearts and minds while fighting. They are also defended by post-Christians who believe in fighting but have been taught (just like the Berkeley people) a self-centered humanism too weak for war time.

But we can settle all of this: let’s propose a study. I will apologize to Berkeley if the average abusive guard is a practicing Christian (church weekly or nearly weekly). They should apologize to America if the average abusive guard lives (in their private lives) like the average Berkeley student.

For a parody of the “new” Orthodox arguments about women priests, see my page at the parody site www.revdaleowen.org.

For the second time this year, The Word magazine has an article on women’s ordination that clearly favors it. One thing that should cause concern is the level of argumentation used. It reflects badly on the quality of our seminary training.

This is starting to look like a pattern. The issue is “under discussion” according to the writer. Academics who want to produce unpopular change love “discussions.” There is no great push for women’s ordination from the pews or from the priests, but self-proclaimed theologians can create a “controversy” out of whole cloth by repeated self-reference. One need only look at the Anglican communities to see where this road leads.

Ironically, this essay, which reads like an earnest first year seminary paper by a badly read student, is followed by an article on homosexuality. Readers of The Word should try this interesting experiment. Apply the reasoning used in the article on “women’s ordination” to the arguments against homosexuality. It would in fact be easier to justify homosexual acts, using the reasoning of the first writer, than women’s ordination. For example, the Fathers did not know what “modern science” teaches about homosexuality. They were blinded by cultural assumptions. Modern “married” homosexuality is different. Of course, all that is rot and a misuse of tradition, but that is what happens when one begins advocacy scholarship. Bending tradition and logic to a pre-determined end, has no limit. Make no mistake: ordaining women will lead (as it always does) to gay marriage.

Wicked ideas are often brought into the modern Church through the guise of academic discussion. However the deposit of faith is not open to academic discussion in the Church. The Church is an Ark of Salvation, not a grad seminar in a secular university. The editor of The Word should be replaced for allowing the faithful to be scandalized by heterodox and badly argued articles.

Orthodox Christians should immediately ask persons favoring the ordination of women to repent. Some things are not open for discussion, though apologetic work is always useful in defending sacred tradition. Orthodoxy is not about to examine whether we should up date the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. In the same way, the Holy Spirit is not going to lead us to cause schism in the Church by adopting the utterly unjustified break with tradition represented by “women priests.” Instead we will continue to follow the Mother of God and her example of beautiful sanctified womanhood.

Discouraged by the troops in Iraq? There are many fine gentlemen in Iraq. I knew one. He is home now, but here is a piece I wrote that might remind us all of some of the brave lads over there. “To Jon Dyk” is now in the articles section. Check it out.

I used to berate evangelicals who pasted a Bible verse on everything and called it “thinking like Christ.” I know what I meant, but I fell into another trap. I began taking Bible verses off everything. I said, “You can do art for art’s sake and science for science’s sake.” In the sense, that God created a great big cosmos with many tasks in it, it is true that we may be called to art or science. However, we are not yet in Paradise. In a fallen world, the great commission is in effect. I am called to make disciples. Art or science for the sake of art or science is not enough. Everything should bring me back to the God in Three Persons. Bible verses and praise to God should reappear in my work and life as a natural result of what I do.

This is how I have come to think of Intelligent Design and other intellectual projects. ID is not Christianity. Civil religion is not Christianity. Both are intellectual meeting places where I can find co-laborers for good causes. They are also touch points to bring people to deeper truth. ID does not by itself point to the God of the Bible, but no Christian can long rest with ID. He will want to make the point that Jesus Christ is the Word that created all things. When I pray with my friends in a pro-life meeting to God, I want to end abortion by working with my Latter Day Saint (Mormon) friends. But at the same time, and even more important, is my desire to show them the joys of the Holy Trinity they reject.

My life cannot be put in compartments anymore. I want to talk about Jesus all the time.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

What does it means when Paul commands us to rejoice in Philippians? When I was in Bible College, we had some joy-fascists who would come and order us to cheer up at every turn. Someone could have broken their arm and the joy police would arrive and say with odious cheer, “All things work together for good! It could be worse: you could have broken two arms!” At this point, the temptation was to put on mourning and join Uncle Tony in bemoaning the state of the church and feeling superior to the joy fascists.

Instead, I had to ask: why was my religion so joyless? What was joy? It did not take much of a study of Greek to discover that joy was not a feeling. I think “joy” is being in Christ. Dante calls it “trans-humanization.” Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit comes and places His seed within us. We are slowly transformed following our legal acquittal of guilt. Rejoicing is the appropriate response of person in that divinely beautiful position.

Of course, joy often comes associated with a feeling of deep passion. This passion is so wonderful that it is tempting to try to bottle it and keep the bottle on hand for use in tough times. This does not work as any Christian can tell you. One cannot really have the feeling without the thing itself. Sometimes one can even have joy without the feeling. This is like love. Sometimes a man loves his wife without the feeling of love normally associated with the virtue.

I believe that joy comes when we allow the Holy Spirit to work miraculously in us. Joy is the state of being at liberty to do be virtuous by the power of the Holy Spirit and the administration of His grace.

We begin to allow the Holy Spirit to show His divine power in our lives. We see healing and miracles. Our minds become better able to reason (Good Lord deliver me!) and see truth. In short, we become like Christ. In this state, our emotions may fluctuate but our position and our very being does not. We are Christ’s sons and daughters.

Suddenly, I want to stop writing and worship. Every object in this world becomes beautiful to me as I see it as part of His created order. My family becomes sweet and the proper emotions roll through my heart. My precious children. My wife. Joy. Rejoicing.

So if I break my arm, I can register the pain. I can note the bad emotions, but like the god-breathed Church Fathers I can also note my position before the Father. To quote one of the songs we sang in Bible College, “I have Jesus joy.” It is real, authentic, not fake, and not a new law. It is what I am becoming.

Victor Davis Hanson on Rumsfeld and Iraq on National Review Online

Most important.

In Iraq tonight there are men in harm’s way. Why are they there?

They are there because terrorism does not know any borders. Sadaam was a terrorist. He hates the United States and our way of life. He was sure to eventually give aid to the 9/11 terrorists, because he recognized that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Only a fool would leave two mad men together to plot, plan, and prevaricate. Does anyone doubt Sadaam would have used any tool or group to strike at the United States?

Sadaam was breaking all the United Nations resolutions passed against him. We know he had active programs to produce weapons of mass destruction contrary to those resolutions. We know he had missiles to deliver those weapons that were in direct violation of those resolutions. He was a sadistic and evil man who had killed millions and wanted to kill millions more. He had tried to assassinate the President of the United States.

So our boys patrol the deserts and the cities of Iraq. They do so for little pay and precious little thanks. Tens of thousands of eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year olds are sacrificing the last years of youth to defend the nation. Some of them have acted heroically, most of them have acted nobly.

In a cynical age, even saying that we are thankful invites eye rolling from the media and the cosseted academics in their fully funded government jobs. On the left bank, these Frenchmen of the heart sit in cafes, nursing their angst formed by the slightest denial of their utopian schemes aimed at their own gratification. They have always despised the military and now a few bad soldiers have confirmed their view of all the troops. So they rejoice. And rub it in.

A few, a very few, of these brave boys have behaved badly. For that their mission is being ridiculed. Members of the United States Senate accuse them of reopening the torture rooms of the Butcher of Baghdad. Liberals who have protected a culture of pornography are shocked, simply shocked, when weak souls act out the images the media sewers of the left had placed in their minds.

Meanwhile, all over the world, the terrorists plot and plan US defeat. Ask Israel if they can be bought or mollified. They still plan revenge on Spain for Spanish victories over radical Islam six hundred years in the past. Islamic-fascism knows no reason.

They fear only one man: George W. Bush. Put simply, he had the will to remove their puppet government in Afghanistan. He had the will to remove their potential ally in Iraq. He will attack any nation that harbors terrorists and unlike the French, Russians, and Germans, Bush cannot be bought with oil money The best hope of the terrorists at stopping the US armed forces and their Commander in Chief is to frighten the American people into voting for John Kerry, a man who has argued for appeasement and defeat in every great conflict of his lifetime. They most beat George Bush at the ballot box, because they cannot beat him with bullets.

The victory of Bush in November of 2004 marks the certain doom of global terrorism.

Amazon.com: Books: Worlds Apart: The Unholy War Between Religion and Science

To keep encouraging you to check my articles, I have written a review of this gosh-horrid book. Those who are interested in the Creation-Evolutionism debate might take a look. It is under “Giberson on Trial.”

Hurrah for civil religion, the more Christian the better! Though they rarely can say why, there is a new fashion amongst some evangelicals to speak of “civil religion” in tones usually reserved for the Klan or Nazis. (Such people rarely have hard words for Communists who are usually simply misguided in the eyes of the critic of American civil religion.) Generally, this disdain for a valuable bit of social glue (and we need more of that not less) comes from two mistakes.

First, the critic of civil religion assumes that American civil religion in not “Christian.” Let us assume for the moment that it is not Christian, though given the fact that the population is overwhelmingly Christian that would be hard to argue. Civil religion may not be fully Christian, but it is compatible with Christianity. Civil religion is a set of ideas necessary to the Christian faith (and other religions), but not sufficient for a full expression. No one will be saved by American civil religion. Just as intelligent design allows for a creator, without naming Him, so civil religion allows for a sovereign God without giving all the (important) theological details. It is a common platform for Christians of all persuasions and Jews to work together.

Next from the critic comes the list of American evils: abortion (or not, depending on the writer), unjust wars, porn, oppression of the author’s favorite group. What the person writing usually misses is that the evils described, even when they are real (and our citizens have many problems) are rarely national policy. They are the result of freedom. I do not believe that abortion should be legal, but making abortion legal is not the same thing as the government performing abortions. Our government does not perform or fund abortions. Our government makes the internet possible, but it does not make us use it badly.

Recognition of our Creator in civic functions shows citizens that the state is not supreme. That is good by itself. Though imperfect, and not sufficient for individuals, civil religion should be supported and not attacked.

Today I was reading John Fine’s breezy introduction to the ancient Greeks. This is history writing at its best as a first rate scholar goes right ahead and makes assertions without getting bogged down wit too many footnotes. Academic labor can suffer from two faults: either being assertive, but ignorant, or too careful to be interesting. Fine is the rare balance between the two. Fine gets one thinking . . . and that is praise worthy indeed.

His views on Homer and history were provocative. He traces the swing between the views that Homer was pure myth to taking Homer as history. At present (if Fine is to be believed) scholars are in the middle position. Homer is describing a war that happened and even some of the details are correct. However, much of the story is more a reflection of the ninth century B.C. than of the time of the Trojan War. One ‘anachronism’ he cites is the description of Ajax and his armor which is “earlier” than the time of the War.

I paused. Any time someone takes the middle position in a scholarly book, my warning lights begin to flash. Too often middle positions are incoherent muddles that succeed only in stealing the weaknesses of both extremes while avoiding their strengths. Ajax always seemed a dullard to me in Iliad, the Hulk without a trace of Bruce Banner. Might such a man be backwards, intentionally anachronistic? Of course, he might. And so we are left with the text and best guesses. Isn’t best to assume the text is accurate? Much of the rest of the assault on Homer seemed equally flimsy to me.

I have little tolerance for the culture of cultivated skepticism that surrounds much of the academy. We do not believe without confirmation. Since confirmation of our father’s tales will rarely be found, we end up with a limited and pedestrian history. Instead, I have decided to believe that there were fairies in the glen, if my ancestors say so, than to adopt the fruitless skepticism that doubts such a thing without a fairy to dissect. And the doubters would dissect a fairy, make no mistake.

Of course, the elite intellectuals never sneer at themselves only at love of God, country, and family. They are, I think, mostly bitter losers forced by an inability to compete to live in the socialist habitat of academic cloisters tearing down men and women who could thrash them in a fair fight. I think the time is long past when we began to trust the stories of our grandmothers more than the latest jargon ridden papers of the authorities.